Mentoring!

aaaa, hello! Yes, I'd really like to learn how to code and help improve the wikia. Thanks!

ALSO SCREECH I'M SO EXCITED TO SEE THE COVER FOR LEGACY :DDDD BUT ALSO KIND OF NERVOUS BECAUSE I REALLY WANT DEX AND MARELLA (OR BIANA, but mainly those two) TO BE ON THE COVER.

Awesome!!! What would you like to learn about first?

I'm really worried that Shannon isn't going to put Dex on the cover. IT WOULD BE SO SAD... but hopefully our Dexy will be there *cries*

pOOR dEXY

((( I'm sad he wasn't on it, but the cover is still amazing

Also I'm not sure I know where to start learning because I know near to nothing about coding.

It looks super cool, but I don't really like the scene... I feel like this series, starring a girl who obviously is more interested in friendship than love (stated in many books), is turning into a love story.

Okay, coding. First of all, the coding language that we're using is heavily modified HTML. It's mostly normal HTML, but there are lots of things that wouldn't be seen elsewhere with this version. A few basic things to start (which might make 0 sense as of now):

1. You use carrots for your tags (<>)
2. To close a tag, you use a slash (</>)
3. You must close your tags, although there are a few exceptions
4. With coding, you'll either want to basically live in templates, or set your default editing to source mode. (I do both) If you don't, you won't be able to edit your coded messages, so I suggest setting the default to source mode when coding, then switching back. (to change it, hover over your profile pic at the top of the screen, and click preferences. Then, go to the "editing" tab and change the "preferred editor" to whatever you need it to be)

Maybe first, I should teach why smiley faces often go wrong and how to fix them:

A colon in a message at the very beginning of a paragraph indents it. See here:

this is indented

The raw code is:

: this is indented

That is why smiley faces are indented. Winkey faces are bolded:

A semicolon in a message at the very beginning of a parargraph bolds it. See here:

this is bolded

The raw code is:

; this is bolded

There are a few more, but those are just some wikicode (this type of modified HTML) shortcuts.

To make them not happen, use a nowiki tag. It looks like this:

<nowiki>the code in here wouldn't happen, it would just be viewable</nowiki>

btw ask all dem questions (if you need) because this is cONFUSING stuff

Also, the above is an example of closing a tag. Here, I'll emphasize the closed tag

<nowiki>the code in here wouldn't happen, it would just be viewable</nowiki>

The </nowiki> is a closed tag. All you have to do is repeat the first tag, but put a slash before it. If you're going to do font or div or span tags, it's a bit different, but I'll go over those later.

woah coding is really confusing but I think I kind of get the basic idea of the smiley faces thing

wait I don't quite understand what you mean by tags and how to use them

:)

AAAA I FIGURED IT OUT KIND OF

I don't really understand how the closed tags work, could you explain that? Thanks

Awesome! So an opening tag looks like this: <nowiki>

A closing tag looks like this: </nowiki>

Closing your tags is pretty much the equivalent of stopping the code. An opening tag says "start this function" and a closing tag says "now stop the function"

Closing tags are always the function repeated with a slash in front of it

oooh okay that makes sense. so if you bolded a sentence and then wanted to stop the bolded words would you use </nowiki> ? 

or is it used to stop some other function?

</nowiki> is to stop a nowiki function. if you have a <nowiki> tag, you'll have to close it, or else everything after it will be nowiki-ified. Sorry for being so confusing...

Ahah thanks, I think I kind of understand it, but could you give me an example of when it can be used?

How do you add images to the pages?

(circled in blue)

Ooooh okay cool thanks. My default is the same as yours :)

oh yay! i like source mode default, but it's usually kinda hard to input certain things like infoboxes. That's when I switch to normal xd

How are you doing on coding?

If you want to take a pause, that's fine. One of the best methods to learn is to look at others' code! It helps to know the basics first, though.

yeah, I have added some stuff by copying the already coded format but my finals are all over, so I have a lot of free time to keep learning :)

Awesome! I get out of school on Wednesday, so do you wanna chat then?

sure!

Yay! Cya soon!